The launch of patch EA 0.5 will happen, but is not scheduled yet. I will let you know.

Patch notes for EA 0.4.5 added

Patch notes for EA 0.4.6 added

This is a brief overview of what you can expect from the coming bugfix patch. It will be ready for launch next week.

More crashes have been solved. The process of finding and selecting a plot for your new building has been improved and there are bug fixes and enhancements for AI-controlled businesses (your own businesses and the businesses of AI dynasties). As a result, your opponents are more active in economic matters now. We will further improve economy AI.

On top of this, a lot of UI elements have been worked over and UI bugs were fixed. For example, using the mouse wheel to zoom the area map should no more cause the world camera to zoom as well. Also, the position of texts in UI menus and tooltips was fixed. Last but not least, 3D models, textures and animations were fixed, adjusted and/or added.

We'll post the full list of bug fixes as soon as the patch goes live next week.

Hey Guild fans!

We have announced a patch for this week, but ran into a major bug during our last test run. We are working flat out on it and will provide the patch as soon as possible. We apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience!

Hello dear community!

The next patch will be launched on Tuesday next week. Stay tuned!

Patch notes for Patch Version: EA 0.4.13 on May 8th, 2018

New Feature
- Scenario map: Barony of Birmingham

Stability Fixes
- Fixed a crash that was caused by double clicking the top of the window when in windowed mode;
- Fixed a crash that was caused by selecting the "dynasty trade" action while a member of the dynasty had died;
- Fixed a crash that was caused by initiating a trial where the evidence did not specify the location of the illegal action;
- Fixed a crash that could occur while the player's character was married & attempted to change residence;
- Resolved a crash that could occur by selecting the "fast forward" option immediately after a saved game was loaded;
- Resolved a crash that was caused by carrying a Dagger in the player's inventory;

Fixes
- Fixed multiple issues which related to selecting an appropriate location for constructing new buildings in the game world;
- Resolved an issue where a mountain could "vanish" if a building was constructed at the intersection where a mountain & an available site for construction were connected;
- Character Creation Menu: Resolved an issue that would allow the player to have an unlimited amount of attribute points by selecting the reset link;
- Resolved an issue related to trading a vote in "dynasty trade" where the message "the trade is no longer valid" & the trade was cancelled even though it was still valid. This should no longer happen;
- Improved the AI concerning its reactions to political propositions. It will make a choice instead of always refusing;
- Multiple improvements with the AI in relation to how it manages the production of items;
- Resolved an issue where a NPC would no longer move since they were looking for a bench to sit on. This was caused by an issue with collisions;
- Items in the front store can now only hold items that are produced by the type of building. Therefore, cookies cannot be in the front store of a smithy;
- If the player is unable to upgrade a building, the reason will be displayed when the mouse cursor is placed above the button "Upgrade Building" in the production window;
- Medicus now plays the correct animations;
- While in jail, a character can no longer apply for an office position;
- The action panel will now be displayed in the bottom center in all scenes except for the Medicus scene. Consequently, the player can leave a scene & will not be stuck in the scene;
- A character's action which is in progress will no longer be cancelled when selecting the actions: put building on sale, make offer on building or destroy building;
- After choosing an action, the player's character will remain selected after selecting the target;
- Resolved an issue that would render a character invisible, if he/she was attacked while inside a grove, brushwood or cemetery;
- Fixed an issue where the action to change to a new residence was disabled. This should no longer be the case;
- Adjusted the control of "zoom in/out" functionality while navigating in the area map window;
- When changing residence, the cost will be 200 coins as intended as opposed to 400;
- General improvements concerning the transfer of items;
- Resolved an issue where buildings that were on sale were not purchasable;
- Character's will run instead of walking when carrying out the action "Sabotage";
- When changing clothes via equipping another type of garb while riding a horse, the horse will no longer be detached from the character;
- Employees reaping herbs will now wait to drop off their items if the storage of the business they are connected to is full;
- When a dynasty dies out, their buildings belong to the city and can be purchased;
- The increments of playing speeds were slightly adjusted in order optimize the frame rate;
- Buildings can no longer be built on narrow streets since carts could not access them;
- Character Creation Menu: Only one voice will be played at a time;
- Resolved an issue which would teleport the player's character to their residence or market by selecting the "Go Home" or "Go To Market" actions. This should no longer occur;
- For some reasons, it was not possible to send the application to be considered as new Sovereign to the Monarch once the player became a noble;
- Fixed an issue where the player could not adopt an orphan after the player already had 6 children, but some had passed away. Now, the game recognizes the children that have died & will let the player purchase a child. The maximum number of children is 6;
- NPCs should no longer riot a castle;
- Resolved an issue where the action "unload all" would not always work. This action should now work correctly;
- Adjusted the maximum number of dynasties for the single scenario maps;
- When a level 1 building was constructed it could have happened that for the duration of a frame, the level 2 & 3 would appear & immediately disappear;
- Resolved an issue where the player's avatar would be considered as an employee of the business it entered & would therefore block the slot for a new employee;
- Shortcut keys have been disabled while entering an amount of money in the "give money" window;
- Resolved an issue where special characters from other languages were not displayed correctly in the text of newly built buildings or in the Skill Tree bonuses;
- Multiple text fixes;

Balancing
- AI controlled businesses: all level 1 businesses will now start with an annual budget 300 coins and it will hire 2 workers and 1 transporter. All level 2 businesses start with 3 workers, 2 transporters and a budget of 600 coins & the level 3 businesses start with 4 workers, 3 transporters and a budget of 900 coins;
- AI controlled businesses will now equip their transporters with bags and carts;
- When starting a game, the AI will choose a greater variety of start-up skills for NPC Dynasties;
- AI businesses will now begin with resources in order to ensure the immediate production of items & their transfer to markets;
- AI farms will now produce more resources;
- The needs of the population were reduced in order to stabilize the amount of items / resources which are purchased;
- The market will check itself periodically: if resources are missing, the market takes care of receiving more, while the people purchase resources with very high stocks;
- When hiring an employee, they will now come with a variety of levels between one to three;
- The robber camp will now have immediate access to hire one transporter;
- Growth of the population adjusted;
- General balancing of the single scenario maps;

Part 2 of EA 0.4.13

UI Tweaks & Fixes
- Map Selection Menu: Added the images of the single scenario maps;
- Character Creation Menu: Rotating the character is no longer possible while editing a input box;
- Character Creation Menu: The color of the character's hair & clothing will no longer be reset after choosing another set of clothing or the size of the character;
- Character Creation Menu: The hair style button will no longer be accessible if variations of colors are unavailable;
- Character Creation Menu: Improvements related to the display of the initial skill path;
- Production Menu: The storage rules will no longer be accessible in the player's residence;
- Production Menu: The status of each transport has been added & is displayed beside the route link. The status will indicate whether the transport is moving to a location, picking up at the location or if there is a problem that needs to be resolved;
- Production Menu: Added an equipment section to transporters, workers & visitors in order to ease the transfer of items that can be equipped. You can have access to the equipment slots of characters, if you click the button in the header of the production menu. This also works in the market menu;
- Production Menu: The number of visitors, shown in the transport section of the production window, will now be properly displayed;
- Market Window: Selling items in the market can now be dropped anywhere in the items section;
- Market Window: When purchasing items & the amount selection tool is displayed, only the amount will be affected when using the scroll mouse button. Before it would scroll the list of items underneath simultaneously;
- Market Window: The equipment panel of the avatar will be automatically opened at the marketplace;
- Erect Building Menu: While selecting a building that was furthest to the right of the menu, it could happen that the details Tooltip would appear far to the left of the building icon in question. This has been adjusted;
- Erect Building Menu: The number displayed to the left of buildings relates to the number that the player has in possession;
- Area Map: Using the mouse wheel to zoom should no longer cause the camera to zoom in the world as well;
- Area Map: Added a filter "Show/Hide all";
- Area Map: Added tooltips for clarification;
- Area Map: Added a camera icon which represents its location in the world & the direction it is pointed towards;
- Area Map: Improved the information displayed related to trade routes;
- Skill Tree Menu: The scrolling of the skill tree will no longer stop if the cursor moves out of the menu;
- Skill Tree Menu: Multiple icons added or replaced;
- Skill Tree Menu: Replaced missing bonus unlockables which are connected to titles;
- Politics Menu: Multiple fixes with the positioning of text & UI elements;
- Politics Menu: Added a tooltip to the Sovereign position;
- Clean-up of various UI elements due to them appearing blurry in game;
- The text boxes of mouse over tooltips should correctly adjust itself to display the entirety of the text;
- The bonusable & unlockables icons that are displayed in the details tooltip should be shown in their entirety. The details tooltip can be viewed by holding the right mouse button with the mouse above a UI element where it is available;
- The Map link displayed on the bottom right side of the HUD, now works as a compass & is connected to the direction the camera is pointing. The half of the needle which is full points north;
- Fixed an issue which would cut off text in a pop-up window even if there was space for the text to continue;
- The cost of the Horse Cart should be correctly displayed in the detail tooltip when viewed in the Market window;
- For the far trade action, the progress bar should now be correctly displayed;
- Kidnapped characters will now appear in the player's inventory;
- If a character has been kidnapped, the action to transfer the kidnapped character to the player's residence will appear in the action panel;
- If the avatar has trained for an attribute, the extra allotted point will be displayed in the Character Selected window, located on the bottom left side of the HUD;
- The quick access panel which displays buildings being spied on will now show more buildings before the scroll bar is used;
- Missing Steam icons have been added;
- Multiple action icons have been replaced;
- Updated the quick notifications icons with the revised UI style;
- When a skill is unlocked, a quick notification icon will appear below the link to the skill tree. You can see what skill was unlocked by placing the cursor above the quick notification;
- Added a tooltip for event notifications which are displayed on the right side of the HUD;
- Added a quick notification icon below the link to the quest window after a quest has been completed, with an additional tooltip with more details;
- Adjusted the color of the text displayed in the detail tooltip of items;
- Added a notification when a building the player owns has been destroyed;
- When a character reaches adulthood, his/her portrait will now be updated;
- Adjusted the mouse over version of interactive UI elements in order to easily distinguish them from their base version;
- Modified the detail tooltip of interactive UI elements in order to easily distinguish them from the mouse over version;
- Multiple adjustments & modifications to the glyphs which appeared blurry & unclear. The glyphs are the icons which are displayed with text;
- Fixed an issue which would cause text to stretch;
- The detail tooltip of items will now correctly display the selling / purchasing price similarly to the format used in the market;
- Added multiple missing tooltips;

Art
- Multiple texture fixes on various 3D models;
- Correction of multiple textures which are related to various character's levels of details;
- Corrected the hair for certain character types;
- Multiple 3D model corrections;
- Fixed a glitch that would elongate the hands of one of the female commoner models;
- Fixed two issues which relates to the captains of ships. First a correction concerning the eyes of the captain on larger ships & took off a "glow" that would appear around the captain of smaller ships;
- Correction of animations that were connected to the action "make a compliment";
- Added missing animations which are shown in the Medicus scene;
- Multiple animation fixes;
- Adjusted the size of the birds;
- Multiple environment fixes in various maps;
- Adjustments to the particles;
- Multiple adjustments to the game's shaders;
- Animation assignation adjustments;
- Adjusted the line of sight effect;
- Adjusted some of the colors used to define the city districts and villages when pressing the "Space" key on the keyboard;

Important Message
This patch includes a lot of bug fixes and UI changes as well as enhanced performance and the new scenario map "Barony of Birmingham".
If you realize rapid camera movement due to enhanced performance, there are two ways to overcome this problem: 1) change the camera speed in the options menu or 2) hold down the “shift” key while moving the camera with keyboard or mouse wheel.
Transport items such as bags and carts are no more automatically equipped when you drop them into a character’s inventory. As a result, these items can now be transported like all other goods. You can equip characters with bags, hand carts or horse carts when you open the “equipment panel” via the arrow symbol top right of the production menu or the market menu.
After installing the latest patch, your old saved games will possibly no longer be shown in the menu due to the reason that the game recognizes them as “incompatible”.
All your feedback is appreciated! Please provide us with as many details as possible as this will help shorten bug fixing times. Relevant saved games help us while reproducing bugs, so please add them to a Redmine ticket.
Many thanks!

Patch notes for Version: EA 0.5.0 on June 5th, 2018

New Feature
- We implemented a new camera system that allows you to quickly zoom to points of interest by zooming where the mouse cursor is pointed to. Additionally, the camera is rotating around a focus point, similar to classic RTS cameras. Now it should be more comfortable for you to switch between close-up investigations and getting back a nice overview.
- As tastes are different, we provide you with an additional camera mode: the free camera! This mode allows you to freely rotate the camera on all axes.
- You will be able to switch between the two camera modes via a button above the area map button.
- To avoid creating the feeling of being stuck in the floor we added another smoothing feature to the camera. Now, the closer you get to the terrain the more the camera is inclining, similar to how it was done in The Guild 2.
- The new camera system is now also independent from the frame rate, so frame rate drops should be less recognizable.

Fixes
- One of the major problems with the UI was tackled: some areas of the user interface, where invisible/disabled elements were located, were catching mouse input which lead to several bugs (e.g. characters couldn't be sent to locations on the edge of the view). A lot of changes have been done to the system, so now you should be able to click through UI elements that are hidden.
- Another issue that was related to it is probably known by everybody too well: if the mouse-wheel was used to scroll in a window (e.g. the market menu), the game camera was also zooming. This shouldn't happen anymore due to our refactoring. Though if you want, you can move the cursor out of a window and be able to zoom.
- Camera fixes: we added a very short delay window when you are trying to pan the camera with the right mouse button. This should fix the issue that if you wanted to move the character the camera was moved instead. Also, moving the cursor to the edge of the screen now pans the camera much smoother.
- The process of loading a scenario map or a saved game now ends after the scenario is finally initialized and it is faster than before. The introductive narration and camera flight at the start of scenario maps will be reworked in one of the coming patches.
- Beside dozens of minor bug fixes, we as well solved a large number of bugs with negative influence on the performance - the performance will still be one of our main focuses in question of bug fixes in the next patches!

Art
- To further tackle the performance issues additional level-of-details are created and added for buildings and props. You should barely be able to spot the difference but at a certain distance the number of polygons per building is reduced. The following models have already been changed:
- all 4 farmers houses
- smithy level 1 and 2
- We took your feedback about the Depth of Field (distance blur) effect in the world view seriously and decided to change it. We are aware that shadow glitches are more prominent now and will remedy that in a future path. The field of view is clearer now and we think it fits much better than it was before.

Known issues
By refactoring the input system of the UI a small issue was introduced: in some cases if you are hovering a character portrait with the mouse pointer while another character is selected, the camera will focus on that character in the game world. We are currently on it to fix that.

Important Message
After installing the latest patch, your old saved games will possibly no longer be shown in the menu due to the reason that the game recognizes them as "incompatible". If you have problems with loading or saving, then we recommend deleting all files from the folder named "Games", where all of your saved games are stored.
It is possible that some of the issues that you encounter but other players not, are causes by missing or corrupt files. In this case it may help if you do the following: right click "The Guild 3" in your library and then Properties - "More" -> Manage Installation - Verify / repair


What we plan to do for the next patch...
- The basic character controls and management of all characters (incl. employees) in the dynasty: right now, we see that there are issues to keep an overview on the location of your characters and whether they have something to do or not. We want to introduce an easy access to the employees in your businesses and we will also introduce a feature that allows you to monitor and switch between your idling characters.
- The general controls and feedback related to objects in the game world: right now, the feedback related to what can be selected and what can't is not enough. We want to introduce feedback directly on the objects in the 3D world so it's easier to see what can be interacted with.
- The occlusion issues with characters in the world: currently the vegetation and general big structures are easily occluding characters. We are currently working on a system that increases the transparency of occluding buildings and props (i.e. trees). To avoid any bigger impact on the performance we may introduce an option in the options menu, which allows you to decide whether you want to use the feature or not.
- More level-of-details: for possibly another 20 buildings the level-of-details will be done. This way the performance should also get better with every version.
- More bug fixes.

A brief outlook...
In the near future we plan to jump on the topics "title and progression system" (more requirements for higher titles than just xp) and "better visualization of dynasty characters, employees and buildings" (with the dynastie's colors and/or crests) and "better visualization of employees" (with specific character models), so it will be easier to differentiate important characters and buildings from non-dynasty characters.

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Your feedback counts!
If you can spare some time for the following little survey regarding the changes in patch EA 0.5 you would help us greately: https://goo.gl/forms/gPDOdhqrHolf0gRI3
Please note: we have no intents of collecting data other than your feedback - you stay totally anonymiouse. This survey ends on Sunday, June 17th 2018.

Patch notes for Version: EA 0.5.1 on June 20th, 2018

New Feature
- The tall buildings and lush vegetation often obscure characters, often causing players to lose focus on important events in the city. In addition, one has to constantly rotate the camera to keep the tracked character in view. To solve this problem, we have added a feature that makes the vegetation and buildings transparent if the object is close to the camera. There are a few buildings that hide earlier than they should, but most of them work very well.
- We've implemented a highlight shader which highlights hovered characters or buildings. This feature should make it easier for you to see whether an object can be interacted with or not.
- Now, if you use actions that require a character or building as a target, then valid targets turn green and invalid targets turn red when hovered. This makes your search for a valid target much more comfortable. In future patches we will also revise the feedback texts that are displayed if you have a valid or invalid target under the mouse pointer. Please note that we still need to revise some measures so that the targets are all correctly colored and the correct feedback text is displayed. We will fix that in a later patch.
- One problem area that both we ourselves have noticed and which was also present in your feedback is that it is sometimes difficult to determine what/who is currently selected. As a first step, we have now implemented that when you select a character or building, a white outline is drawn around the selected object. To be consistent we removed the green highlight for selected buildings. The farther the camera is from the target, the larger the outline appears. That should also make it easier to determine at long distances what is actually selected. The outline is only drawn over visible objects, which can sometimes seem strange in trees, but otherwise fits better into the picture. If you deem the behavior with trees as very negative, we already have some ideas how we could solve that. Please let us know.
- If your avatar or one of your employees has no task, then it has often been difficult to notice that. Therefore, we have a new feature built in: on the right edge of the screen you will find the button "show idle characters". If it is grayed out, then you do not have to act. However, if this is not the case and a number is displayed next to the button, then you know that one or more of your characters are currently without a task. If you click the button, you will gradually be able to call all these characters and assign them a new task. In order to prevent the button from lighting up whenever, for example, a worker has just run out of raw materials and the new raw materials have not yet arrived at the business, we have implemented a delay until a character is listed as "idle".
- When you select a building, you will see the name of the building and the owner's coat of arms. If the building is in your possession, then additional portraits of all characters in the building are displayed. You can also directly select the individual characters by clicking on their portrait. The selected character then shows a white outline (consistent with the selected characters and buildings). This should make it much easier for you to get an overview of family members and employees. One more tip: To see which characters are in an opponent's building, you have to spy on it.

Fixes
- Fixed several crashes caused by using startup parameters in Steam.
- The game could crash while you are constructing a building, if certain decoration objects were present on the ground. This should not happen anymore.
- Under certain circumstances, the folder for save games wasn't created during the installation of the game. This could either lead to a crash or the game not being saved. From now on, the folder for save games should always be created automatically.
- We have resolved several issues related to saving and loading saved games. Among other things, the saving process should no longer lead to a crash. Important: The saving process may take a while. In this case, please do not click with the mouse, otherwise it may happen that Windows closes the program because it thinks it is frozen. We are already looking at this and hope to find a solution soon.
- Several memory leaks have been fixed, which has a positive impact on the performance especially later in the game. We will continue to optimize this.
- If you have more than 40 saved games, the save window is now displayed correctly.
- The saving window is not shown behind the list of save games anymore.
- It could happen that the characters on bridges completely disappear, this should be fixed now.
- If you follow a character with the RTS camera over a bridge, the camera does not move under the bridge anymore.
- The selection system has been revised: Especially if you had changed the angle of the camera, often characters or buildings were selected behind the object, which you actually wanted to select. In general, the selection behavior should now be much more precise and faster.
- Tooltips that partially or completely cover buttons should no longer prevent clicking on underlying buttons.
- Tooltips of the environment map and for changing the camera mode are no longer below the according buttons.
- The camera icon on the map now also moves correctly in "Free Camera" mode.
- If you move the mouse cursor over a character portrait, the camera does not automatically center this character.
- You can now select transporters again via the transporter window. You can now also select the building if you click on the building name in the same window.
- The music when playing as a rogue is now played correctly.
- All options of the warehouse are available again: hire and fire transporters, statistics, sell and destroy building and purchase building upgrades.

Art
- The following buildings and walls have been optimized and 3 additional LOD levels have been added. The performance should be a lot better than before, especially when you are looking over the city in a flat camera angle:
- all 4 Houses
- all 8 Citizen Houses
- all 5 Mansions
- Windmill
- Farm level 1 to 3
- Bakery level 1 to 3
- Butcher
- Tavern level 1 to 3
- Crude Craftsman's Hut
- Smithy level 3
- Stonemasonshop level 1 to 3
- Carpentershop level 1 to 3
- Tailorshop level 1 to 3
- Thieves' den level 1 to 3
- City Church
- City Walls
- City Gates
- To make the differentiation of building types easier, we will successively change the roof textures of all buildings: houses: orange shingles, businesses: bluish shingles, public buildings: grayish shingles.

Known issues
- Some players have reported that they can not start the game anymore. We have an idea of why it might be and will look at it.
- The building construction mode is unfortunately not yet optimal: under certain circumstances, a building is erected at a location other than selected.
- Hiding buildings and vegetation, when the camera is close to the object, currently has the unwanted effect that mountains are hidden and you can see the unprocessed level underneath. We will gradually revise the maps, so you will not have this effect anymore.

Important Message
After installing the latest patch, your old saved games will possibly no longer be shown in the menu due to the reason that the game recognizes them as "incompatible". If you have problems with loading or saving, then we recommend deleting all files from the folder named "Games", where all of your saved games are stored.
It is possible that some of the issues that you encounter but other players not, are causes by missing or corrupt files. In this case it may help if you do the following: right click "The Guild 3" in your library and then Properties - "More" -> Manage Installation - Verify / repair


What we plan to do for the next patch...
- For certain titles you will not only need XP but also have to pay money.
- We will bring a small update to the economy: Several bug fixes should ensure that the AI management of businesses produces a wider range of products, thus better serving the market. Additionally we will re-work how the AI will handle working places which are unlocked via building upgrades and how the AI restaffs after a worker died.
- As announced, we want to implement visible recognition and differentiation of dynasty characters, employees and buildings using clothing colors and coats of arms on buildings.
- We will also add that employees look different depending on their profession. We will have changed only some of the characters but we will update more in the future.
- Among other things, we will fix the error that you can still use employees with the wrong profession as a worker in another business.
- Currently, the lifespan of characters is very similar. Our goal is that life spans are significantly different. The natural life expectancy of dynasty members should then be between 55 and 89 years, while non-dynasty characters will have a natural life expectancy between 40 and 89 (later on, diseases, toxins, injuries and items like the Elixir of Dr. Faustus will affect natural life expectancy)
- In general, we will look at and fix issues related to the aging and dying (of age) of characters.

A brief outlook...
- The next major priorities are to correct the error-prone pathfinding and to further improve performance. We will also continue to make further changes to the character controls and feedback.

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Your feedback counts!
If you can spare some time for the following little survey regarding the changes in patch EA 0.5.1 you would help us a lot: https://goo.gl/forms/3vjmM93EQXUeoCbt1
Please note: we have no intents of collecting data other than your feedback - you remain completely anonymous. This survey ends on July 1st, 2018.